STEP BY STEP TO THE AI SUMMIT

AI in the Industry

In recent years, artificial intelligence has experienced unprecedented growth worldwide. Also in the Netherlands, the technology is already widely used. According to the AI Monitor 2024 by CBS, 22 percent of Dutch companies with 10 or more employees use AI technologies – an increase of almost 9 percent compared to the previous year. This strong growth illustrates the increasing recognition of AI’s potential, but at the same time hides a challenge: although almost all companies want to do “something” with AI, only a small part considers themselves ready for its implementation. Why is this the case? And more importantly: how can your company bridge this gap?

The Gap Between Potential and Practice

The technology is not the issue. Machine learning is transforming maintenance from reactive to predictive. Quality control is evolving from manual inspection to intelligent recognition systems that detect anomalies which escape the human eye. And through Agentic AI, supply chains are changing into dynamic processes where factors such as price, delivery date, and changing market conditions are managed in real-time. So the technology certainly isn’t standing in the way – quite the contrary – it’s entirely ready. Yet there remains a substantial difference between what’s possible and the daily reality in most factories.

If we were to place all organizations on an AI ladder, we would see that the majority still stand below the first rung and haven’t yet started with AI integration. For this group, AI is not on the strategic agenda, putting them at significant risk of losing market relevance. One step higher are the organizations that have begun with several AI use cases. These organizations have developed initial prototypes and gathered lessons learned, with applications primarily focused on increasing productivity through task automation — such as smarter searches, faster customer processing, or data usage for maintenance and quality control. However, many of these remain stuck at the proof-of-concept level without further scaling.

Higher up the ladder, we see organizations that have formulated an AI vision, realized its embedding, and fully incorporated AI into the DNA of the organization. These three rungs together comprise only 5% of all organizations in the Netherlands.

That less than 25% of organizations have taken a first step is understandable – for many, it’s unclear where to begin, which AI applications will actually add value, and how AI can be integrated into existing processes. This requires not only a technical infrastructure but also a corporate culture that is open to discovering the possibilities of AI. This culture is often already present in some form, in the willingness and interest of employees.

Employees are Ready – Is Management Too?

Recent research from McKinsey & Company’s ‘Superagency in the Workplace’ shows that almost all employees (94 percent) have some familiarity with generative AI tools, while C-level consistently underestimate AI integration within their organizations. Where managers suspect that only four percent of employees utilize AI for their daily activities, employees argue that this percentage is three times higher. This discrepancy also manifests in future expectations: management anticipates that only 20 percent of staff will integrate AI into daily tasks within a year, while almost half (47%) of employees themselves express this intention.

The figures from this research give a clear signal: the brake on AI adoption does not lie with employees, but rather with hesitant management that underestimates their teams’ AI readiness. The popularity of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools has already created a natural openness. Employees who have gained experience with these accessible AI applications at home or in the office are potentially much more receptive to further innovation. Their first positive experiences with text generators may make the step toward machine learning for process optimization or deep learning for complex analyses much smaller and less threatening than thought.

Although most respondents in the McKinsey research come from the US, we also see widespread use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools in the Netherlands. Here too, familiarity with AI and acceptance of AI is growing.

The Way Forward

With employees who are willing and a technology that is ready, the challenge seems to lie primarily with the vision and ambition behind AI implementation and the courage to take a step on the AI ladder. To facilitate this transition, a shift in thinking is necessary: from fear of uncertainty to envisioning possibilities. AI is still too often seen as a technology that “comes in addition” rather than as a catalyst for transformation. The challenge here is not only to implement quickly but to find the right balance between speed and safety, between incremental improvements and innovation.